PHOTOGRAPHY MINI-BREAKS IN WALES AND YORKSHIRE

I’ve had a great couple of weeks running workshops in the Brecon Beacons in Wales and the Yorkshire Dales. The weather was really good at both locations and on both courses I had a lovely group of photographers attending.

The Brecon Beacons is a wonderful part of the world with high peaks, rolling hills, stunning waterfalls, ruined abbeys, lakes and reservoirs. On the evening before the course started, I climbed Pen y Fan along with one of the students who had arrived the evening before the course was due to start.

Brecon Beacons is a fantastic area for waterfalls; we shot a number of different falls using slow and fast shutter speeds and different compositions. High mountain views along with ruined abbeys also provided great subjects for all my photography students. We matched each subject to the light conditions which changed from day to day.

The Yorkshire Dales are similar to the Brecon Beacons, but also very different in many ways. We based ourselves in Malham which is in the south part of the Dales and is perfect for exploring a large area of the Yorkshire Dales. Like the Beacons the dales offer many fantastic waterfalls to photograph, huge limestone cliffs, rolling hills, limestone walls, ruined barns and abbeys along with fast flowing rivers and photogenic limestone pavements. I believe the dales have half the total amount limestone pavements in the UK.

We had perfect weather for the courses. Sunshine, with fast moving clouds and some overcast weather which is perfect for photographing waterfalls.

An added bonus was having an old derelict barn a short walk from where we were staying which we lit up at dusk using a powerful torch. This technique is called “painting with light”. It’s a real fun thing to try with some incredibly artistic results.

So, all in all I’ve now run a couple of great photography course mini-breaks, with a couple more still left to run this autumn.